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It is about time that I got around to telling the rest of the Finding Minnie story, or at least the story so far. You might remember that last time I wrote about contacting my newly found third cousin and how she thought she might have some photos of interest in her grandmother’s photo album.

She was right, they were definitely of interest because they showed my grandmother and great-grandmother along with Minnie herself and several other children.

It is fortunate that Minnie had the foresight to write names and dates in the photo album. How often do you see that? It is fortunate because I wouldn’t have recognised my grandmother in most of these, as I don’t recall ever seeing any photos of her as a child before.

There was one photo however which was unmistakably my grandmother. It was uncanny, the face looking back at me, that smiling face which I had seen so many times as I was growing up, but which I hadn’t seen since she passed away in 1999.

Annie Hemsley (dated 1927)

Apart from seeing that wonderful smiling face again it was great to see my grandmother as a child (she would have been ten or eleven when this photo was taken). I only remember her as an old woman and here she was enjoying herself climbing a tree, just being a child.

I can’t help but think see wasn’t really dressed for climbing trees, more likely dressed for going to school or church, but then children will be children, and it was just so wonderful to see her being a child.